Charity monitoring situation after Hurricane Beryl

The hurricane was upgraded to a category five

A Cornish charity has said it is "monitoring" the effects of a hurricane which made landfall in several countries in the Caribbean on Monday.

At least one person died after Hurricane Beryl left thousands of people without power or living in temporary shelters in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and St Lucia.

The hurricane was upgraded to a category five which can cause damage and destruction with high level winds.

ShelterBox's head of emergency responses, Alice Jefferson, said the charity was taking decisions "hour by hour" and "day by day" and was ready to respond "if needed".

Ms Jefferson said: "A really widespread area of the Caribbean has already been affected, but we're deeply concerned about what's to come over the coming days.

"We take decisions hour by hour, day by day with events like this.

"We have a lot of preparedness efforts that have been underway for a long time."

She said the team had emergency shelter aid such as tarpaulins and solar lights ready to provide when needed.

Ms Jefferson added the challenges included the logistics of working across multiple islands and communication when there was a lack of power.

She said: "With the impact of storms like this and communications being down it's difficult to understand exact needs but we know from experience [what is needed]."

Shelterbox said it was not currently deploying to the region but would do so if conditions required it to.